George Orwell and the British State

Lalkar

Generations of children in all parts of the world have been brought up on the
anti-communist fairy tale distortions of the history of the Great Socialist
October Revolution by that arch-reactionary, George Orwell. In his writings,
notably Animal Farm, 1984 and Homage to Catalonia, Orwell gave
vent to his unbridled anti-communism. Although his words were of little artistic
merit (and this is admitted even by bourgeois literary critics), he was widely
published and his books prescribed as compulsory texts in the schools' curricula
- for the sole reason that his works fulfilled a most useful political purpose
for the big, as well as the petty, bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries and
their satellites all over the world.

Orwell, following the pattern already set by that notorious renegade from the
cause of the October Revolution, namely, Trotsky, pretended to be a supporter
and defender of the founding principles of the revolution, merely protesting at
the alleged corruption of its ideal in the Soviet Union by Stalin. Anyone who
knows of the actual course of development of the Soviet Revolution - of the
miraculous achievements of socialist construction in the USSR, in industry as
well as in agriculture and of her cultural achievements, of the might and world
historic contribution of the USSR to the defeat of Nazi Germany - could not be
misled by Orwell's scurrilous lies. Unfortunately there are hundreds of millions
of people around the world who are ignorant about the actual developments in the
USSR of those days and who have gained their 'knowledge' from the 'learned'
writing of bourgeois hacks such as Orwell. Having read anti-communist trash such
as Animal Farm, they feel sufficiently well-equipped to become experts
on the former USSR and to pontificate about the degeneration of the ideals of
the Russian Revolution from every platform and through every medium provided to
them courtesy of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

Writing on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Animal Farm, a
certain Stuart Jefferies says:

'Each moment in Soviet history is paralleled by the novel. The revolution can
be understood through the expulsion of Farmer Jones by the united animal
proletariat. The Russian civil war can be understood through the Battle of the
Cowshed, in which the inspired tactics of the pig Snowball (Trotsky) helped to
defeat the better-armed humans. [This is yet another falsification of Soviet
history by which, contrary to all known facts, Trotsky alone is portrayed as the
saviour of the Soviet Republic against the invading hordes of imperialism]. The
rise of Stalin can be understood through the rise of the pig Napoleon, protected
by his vicious dogs (the KGB) [denigration and denunciation of Stalin, this
remarkable man and one of the most important leaders of the international
proletariat is an article of faith with the bourgeoisie and its hired coolies].

'Through the novel, moreover, we can understand the steady erosion of
revolutionary ideals, the collapse from the dictatorship of the proletariat to
dictatorship of a cynical few; how the Soviet Union came to work with
capitalists, while all the time protesting that it would bury them.' ['An arable
parable,' The Guardian, 9 August 1995].

What attracted the bourgeoisie to this third-rate writer was not his
pretended support for the ideals of the October Revolution, but his real driving
hatred for the ideals of communism. Had Orwell's characterization of Stalin, and
the CPSU that he led, corresponded to the truth, that would have made Stalin the
darling of the imperialist bourgeoisie; had there been a steady erosion of
revolutionary principles and had the dictatorship really collapsed into the
dictatorship of a cynical few, Stalin's Russia would have been warmly embraced
to the point of suffocation by imperialism. Precisely because the Russian
reality did not accord with Orwellian reactionary fables, as the Soviet Union
was busy tearing down her miserable capitalist and feudal past and constructing
a bright socialist future for her people, imperialism waged a life and death
struggle, ranging from economic blockade to armed intervention, against her.

Orwell was even more reactionary, if such a thing is possible, than Winston
Churchill. The latter at least had the sense to wait until the end of the Second
World War before publicly resuming his anti-communist crusade. Orwell by
comparison could not contain his anti-communism even at the height of the war
when the fate of humanity was being decided in the titanic trial of strength
between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in the battle of Stalingrad. He wrote his
Animal Farm in 1943. Publisher after publisher rejected the book. Even
bourgeois publishers, at least during those days when the dark forces of Nazism
hovered ominously threatening to devour mankind, had more regard than Orwell.
Faber rejected the book as did Victor Gollancz. The latter's reaction was: 'We
couldn't have published it then. Those people [the Soviets]... had just saved
our necks at Stalingrad.'

Realising the inevitability of the resumption of the ideological (and not
just ideological) battle between capitalism and communism, and recognizing the
usefulness of Orwell's tawdry piece of writing in the battle against the
emerging victorious forces of communism in the aftermath of the defeat of
Hitlerite fascism at the hands of the Red Army, Secker and Warburg agreed to
publish Animal Farm, but Fredric Warburg delayed the publication until
after the war. Once the war was over and imperialism had begun in earnest its
preparations for the Cold War, Orwell's time had arrived. Within 5 years of its
publication, 25,000 hardback copies of this book were sold in Britain, whereas a
huge 590,000 copies of it were sold in he United States in the four years
following its publication there in 1946. As Mr. Jefferies correctly remarks in
the article referred to above, although 'many of those who read the book were
right-wingers eager for a novel which appeared to show an ex-socialist recanting
his beliefs... the book was chiefly aimed at the faithful, - those who believed
that the Soviet Union was the way and the truth.'

In other words, Orwell pursued the aim of destroying the proletariat's faith
in building a bright socialist future for itself by denigrating and portraying
in negative terms the epoch-making achievements of the Soviet proletariat.

In view of its worth as libellous treatise against Stalin, against communism,
against the CPSU and the USSR, the bourgeoisie was more than happy to advertise
the book, shower praises on Orwell and reward him with much more than a mere 30
pieces of silver, seeing that the outwardly left veneer of his writings was of
no consequences in comparison with its fictitious and counter-revolutionary
content and its objectively counter-revolutionary role. It was all the easier
for the bourgeoisie to adopt this course as it had already traversed this path
two decades earlier vis-a-vis Trotsky's left-sounding attacks on the Soviet
Union and its leadership. When after his expulsion from the USSR Trotsky
launched his venomously anti-Soviet propaganda, he had the gleeful co-operation
of the elating imperialist organs and press barons. In their splendid book, The
Great Conspiracy, Kahn and Sayers make the following profound observation
apropos Trotsky's ultra-left and radical-sounding attacks on Stalin, the CPSU
and the USSR and the adoption by the bourgeoisie of this new device of attacking
the Russian revolution 'from the left':

'...As far back as 1903, Trotsky had mastered the propaganda device of what
Lenin called 'ultra-revolutionary slogans which cost him nothing'.

'Now, on a world scale, Trotsky proceeded to develop the propaganda technique
he had originally employed against Lenin and the Bolshevik Party. In innumerable
ultra-leftist and violently radical-sounding articles, books, pamphlets and
speeches, Trotsky began to attack the Soviet regime and call for its violent
overthrow - not because it was revolutionary; but because it was as he phrased
it, 'counter-revolutionary' and 'reactionary'.

'Overnight, many of the older anti-Bolshevik crusaders abandoned their former
pro-Czarist and openly counter-revolutionary propaganda line, and adopted the
new, streamlined Trotskyite device of attacking the Russian Revolution 'from the
left.' In the following years it became an accepted thing for a Lord Rothermere
or a William Randolph Hearst to accuse Josef Stalin of 'betraying the
Revolution'...'

Notwithstanding his 'left' veneer, every class-conscious proletarian all over
the world has regarded Orwell as an anti-communist diehard and an agent, paid or
otherwise, of the imperialist bourgeoisie. As was to be expected, the Trotskyist
'left', taking, as ever, its cue from the imperialist bourgeoisie, praised
Orwell to the skies, it ignored Orwell's anti-communism with the assertion that
Orwell was only an anti-Stalinist and not an anti-communist.

And now the bourgeoisie embarrasses these poor little counter-revolutionaries
by revealing that after all Orwell was a policy spy - a fine anti-communist
indeed!

Documents released by the Public Record Office on Wednesday 10 July 1996
reveal that Orwell offered to provide a secret Foreign Office Propaganda Unit
linked to the intelligence services with the names of writers and journalists he
regarded as 'crypto-communist' and 'fellow travellers' who could not be trusted.
Orwell made this offer in 1949, shortly before his death, to the covert
anti-communist propaganda unit set up in 1948 by the Attlee government - that
darling of the Trotskyite, revisionist and labour 'left' - allegedly in response
to the 'developing communist threat to the whole fabric of Western civilization
[i.e. imperialism].' The reader will remember that the paper released by the
Public Record Office in the Summer of 1995 revealed that this Unit, called the
Information Research Department (IRD), used writers, labour leaders and
politicians to disseminate misinformation about the former USSR, the East
European People's Democracies and against the Communist Parties of the West,
notably those of Britain, France and Italy. Well-known literary figures such as
the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the poet Stephen Spender, and Arthur Koestler
(another darling of the Trotskyite fraternity) were enlisted by the IRD to
produce anti-communist propaganda material during the cold war. The
highly-placed Labour politicians used by the IRD included Attlee, Christopher
Mayhew, Denis Healey and Vic Feather. Staffed by 300 officials, the IRD
channelled most of its misinformation through ministerial statements, the
ever-so-'objective' BBC, the press and British diplomatic missions abroad. The
IRD, according to the documents released, singled out articles from the Tribune,
the 'left wing' anti-Soviet weekly, to back up its covert anti-communist
campaign. The IRD successfully, although not surprisingly, conscripted the BBC
into the MI 6's anti-communist crusade, giving the BBC detailed advice about
propaganda to the Soviet Union itself. In a memorandum of Major General Sir Ian
Jacob, the then director of the BBC Overseas Service, one IRD official warned:
'Phrases like 'the Kremlin' in a hostile context should never be used. The
Kremlin is an evocative symbol to most Russians,' adding, as if wanting to leave
no room for doubt as to the counter-revolutionary credentials of Trotsky,
Zinoviev and Bukharin, that 'Russian revolutionary anniversaries should be made
the occasion for references to Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin and other 'close
friends' of Lenin'!!

It was to this nasty imperialist anti-communist unit, the IRD, that the
'socialist' Mr. Orwell, the darling of counter-revolutionary Trotskyites, made
his offer to provide it with names of writers and journalists who could not be
trusted because of their communist sympathies as well as the names of the
anti-communist writers who could be trusted to produce anti-communist
propaganda. According to the documents just released, in March 1949, an IRD
official, Celia Kirwan, visited Orwell in a Sanatorium in Cranham,
Gloucestershire, where he was suffering from tuberculosis. After visiting
Orwell, she (Kirwan) told her colleagues: 'I discussed some aspects of our work
with him in great confidence. He was delighted to learn of them, and expressed
his whole-hearted and enthusiastic approval of our aims.' Do you -hear all this,
gentlemen Trotskyists! Being too ill to write himself, he provided Kirwan with
the names of potential contributors. At the beginning of April, shortly after he
had been visited by her, Orwell wrote to Kirwan offering to provide her with 'a
list of journalists and writers who in my opinion are crypto-communists,
fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted'. He went on to
state that the notebook containing these names was at his London home and
insisted that the list was to be treated as 'strictly confidential' for it would
be defamatory to call someone a 'fellow traveller.' From the papers released
this list is missing, but a card placed next to Orwell's letter to Kirwan says
that a document has been withheld by the Foreign Office.

The papers released further reveal that the IRD promoted the foreign language
publication of Orwell's anti-communist allegory, Animal Farm. An
official at the British embassy in Cairo noted approvingly: 'The idea is
particularly good for Arabic in view of the fact that both pigs and dogs are
unclean animals to Muslims.'

The IRD was keen to promote the publication of Animal Farm in the
Arabic language to counter the growing revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle
of the Arab masses. In particular, the unit was afraid of communism spreading to
the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, notably among the oil workers of Dhaharan,
the scene of the bombing of an American military base in May this year.
Realising that anti-communist propaganda is much more effective when it comes
from sources which sound radical. which claim ostensibly to support the aims for
which communism stands, that it is much more effective from the lips of a
Trotsky or an Orwell than from those of a Lord Rothermere or a Rupert Murdoch,
the IRD was especially keen to use 'left' sounding anti-communist publications.
It therefore arranged the distribution of the 'left'-wing Labour weekly, Tribune,
to British missions abroad. IRD officials noted with satisfaction that the Tribune
'combines the resolute exposure of communism and its methods with the
consistent championship of those objectives which left-wing sympathizers
normally support,' adding, 'many articles in it can be effectively turned to
this department's purposes.' The documents also reveal that the IRD was deeply
involved with the Trades Union Congress (TUC), played an active part in
splitting the international trade union movement in the late 1940s and lobbied
against trade unions supporting the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL)
now renamed Liberty. In a note, a senior IRD official warned in 1949 that the
NCCL was 'heavily communist-penetrated and is in fact being used for little if
nothing more than attacking our colonial administration and policies at every
opportunity.'

The IRD achieved this 'persuasion' through the TUC, where its chief contact
was none other than Vic Feather who was later to become its General Secretary.

Thus we get official confirmation of what has been known to every communist
and class conscious worker for decades, namely, an active partnership between
the bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, social democracy and the
labour lieutenants of capitalism (representing the interests of a privileged
stratum of the working class, viz., the aristocracy of labour), for the sole
purpose of fighting against communism. Nor could it be otherwise, for the
position, the privileges, the very being and existence, of the above classes and
strata of the population depends on the continued existence of imperialist
plunder and robbery. Orwell most definitely belonged to this reactionary, if
significant, minority, who fought desperately then, and is fighting even more
desperately now, for the preservation of the filthy and bloody system of
exploitation, which consigns the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the
globe to utter destitution and indescribable squalor, while bringing fabulous
wealth to the privileged minority. Orwell fought, with all the passion at his
disposal, against the birth of a new society, against communism, which alone
promises, and which alone, as the construction of socialism in the USSR
irrefutably proved, can provide a bright future for humanity, free from the
torments of hunger, free from the anxiety and insecurity of unemployment, and
which alone can provide the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising
material and cultural requirements of the whole of society.

Writing in the Guardian of 11 July, that is, just one day after the
release of the papers by the Public Record Office, which revealed Orwell to be a
police spy, Richard Norton-Taylor and Seumas Milne (the last named being the
writer of the much-acclaimed book, The Enemy Within) say:

'The revelation is likely to shock many of Orwell's admirers, for whom he is
an 20th Century radical icon.'

In fact these admirers, to wit, the Trotskyists, have been so shocked and
embarrassed that, with the sole exception of the shameless and unrepentant
counter-revolutionary Mr. Paul Foot, we have not heard a murmur from these
quarters, who were only recently and so noisily promoting Ken Loach's
reactionary fable Land and Freedom, based on Orwell's
counter-revolutionary fiction, Homage to Catalonia, on the Spanish
Civil War. The latest revelations are nothing short of another nail in the
coffin of Trotskyism. The bourgeoisie, which had no misgivings either about
Orwell's literary merits or his radicalism, meanwhile have had the satisfaction
of using Orwell's writings as a part of its armoury in the fight against
communism. The Moor has served his purpose, the Moor can go. The
counter-revolutionary Orwell, with his veneer of radicalism has served
imperialism well. His time has gone; he is no longer needed. The bourgeoisie
can, therefore, afford to tell us the truth about him, and, into the bargain,
embarrass the counter-revolutionary Trotskyite dupes.

After the latest revelations, Celia Goodman (then Celia Kirwan), now aged 79
and living in Cambridge, spoke publicly for the first time about her connection
with Orwell and how he willingly supplied her with the information while he was
on his death bed. Not realising that there is no socialism other than Marxism,
with disarming candour she said: 'He [Orwell] wasn't betraying socialism. It was
communism. People will get them muddled up.' [Daily Telegraph, Saturday,
July 13th, 1996. 'Orwell's debutante friend tells of role in writer's 'betrayal
list'', Caroline Davies].

Mrs. Goodman was born Celia Mary Paget in Suffolk. She and her identical twin
Mamaine 'were the most photographed debutantes in London. She was widely admired
as one of the most beautiful women in the London literary set.' (ibid).

Recalling her first meeting with Orwell, says Mrs. Goodman:

'I first met George at Christmas 1945 when we were both invited to stay with
my sister and her husband, Arthur Koestler, at their home in Wales' (ibid).

Koestler, like Orwell, was also a state informer enlisted by the IRD. A
Hungarian Jew by birth, he had been a keen Zionist in his youth, then briefly
flirted with communism before finally settling down to a life of ardent
anti-communism. Like Orwell, he too achieved fame and wealth by writing
anti-communist fiction such as Darkness at Noon, supposedly an expose
of Stalin's alleged tyranny.

Celia for her part had left-wing pretensions, 'although she preferred to
describe herself as a social democrat and had no truck with communism, which she
abhorred.' (ibid).

Thus it was the driving anti-communism of the Koestlers, Celia Kirwan and
George Orwell, which united them and brought them closer to each other. And it
was against the background of this anti-communism that Orwell willingly agreed
to become a state informer and write down the names of anti-communist and
communist writers, the former to be used for producing anti-communist propaganda
for the IRD, and the latter not to be trusted, watched carefully and hounded out
of all influential journalist positions. Interviewed after the latest
revelations, Michael Sheldour, one of Orwell's biographers, correctly remarked:

'This was one man, a dying man, sharing his own sense of who would be
supporting the enemy [i.e. communism] and sharing that with a dear friend whose
work he not only agreed with, but with whom personally he had a great sympathy.'
(ibid).

That says it all. Over to you, gentlemen Trotskyites.

Below follows the text of George Orwell's letter to Celia Kirwan.

'I did suggest DARCY GILL, (Manchester Guardian) didn't I? There is also a
man called CHOLLERTON (expert on the Moscow Trials) who cld be contacted through
the Observer.

Cranham, 6.4.49.

'Dear Celia,

'I haven't written earlier because I have really been rather poorly, and I
can't use the typewriter even now, so I hope you will be able to cope with my
handwriting.

'I couldn't think of any more names to add to your possible list of writers
except FRANZ BORKENAU (the Observer would know his address) whose name I think I
gave you, and GLEB STRUVE (he's at Pasadena in California at present), the
Russian translator and critic. Of course, there are hordes of Americans, whose
names can be found in the (New York) New Leader, the Jewish monthly paper
'Commentary', and the Partisan Review. I could also, if it is of any value, give
you a list of journalists and writers who in my opinion are crypto-communists,
fellow-travellers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as
propagandists. But for that I shall have to send for a notebook which I have at
home, and if l do give you such a list it is strictly confidential...

'Just one idea occurred to me for propaganda not abroad but in this country.
A friend of mine in Stockholm tells me that as the Swedes didn't make films of
their own one sees a lot of German and Russian films, which of course would not
normally reach this country, are unbelievably scurrilous anti-British
propaganda. He referred especially to a historical film about the Crimean war.
As the Swedes can get hold of these films I suppose we can; might it not be a
good idea to have showings of some of them in this country...

'I read the enclosed article with interest, but it seems to me anti-religious
rather than anti-semitic. For what my opinion is worth, I don't think anti-anti-
semitism is a strong card to play in anti-Russian propaganda. The USSR must in
practice be somewhat anti-semitic, as it is opposed both to Zionism within its
own borders and on the other hand to the liberalism and internationalism of
non-Zionist Jews, but a polyglot state of that kind can never be officially
anti-semitic, in the Nazi manner, just as the British Empire cannot. If you try
to tie up Communism with anti-semitism, it is always possible in reply to point
to people like Kaganovich or Anna Pauker, also to the large number of Jews in
the Communist parties everywhere. I also think it is bad policy to try to curry
favour with your enemies. The Zionist Jews everywhere hate us and regard Britain
as the enemy, more even than Germany. Of course, this is based on
misunderstanding, but as long as it is so I do not think we do ourselves any
good by denouncing anti-semitism in other nations.

'I am sorry I can't write a better letter, but I really have felt so lousy
the last few days. Perhaps a bit later I'll get some ideas.